68 BOOKS More Yearling Country-Enter K. S. Davis-Americatt Geopolitics . . <Jl "<:; , \ \ " ' :" \ f '.: >: . } \ \' . < ::. . . . ,.w:: \.- 1:.' f . !., .k" . ;Z0d' <, ' . , ,::";: _ .: .:.;.;] :.. . ..."..,:, . . ; .. <::-'.:.. .' .. ..:::,.:.. ' *. . :::.":)" . ', . :: , .:: t I >< .' :":': I . j'''1 "..". ,.., $ %: '. f; . ;' :: .\:'::';'t :\-.r:::': ., flff . - þ . . : :: . ' : : .: k - ". . , ::: ,r',':1 .?,ãs\ ' ':..w . ::..:.,.::.:.,:p.:....,.,. W E have all re- r l marked the I. If comp acen y that sits ;, "preemng Itself be- II" tween the lines of Î certain bucolic au- thors of all times and places, those who seem less eager to hymn the joys of the country than to make the town reader feel his dismal in- feriority. Books about the country- even Thoreau's, for example-often ex- ude a thin gas of disdain for the non-rural that suffices to fill the poor towny with a sense of guilt. And so, when he comes upon a writer quite free of this country- mouse snobbery, he crooks the knee of gratitude, as I do before the work of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. I can read her books about the incomparable ad- vantages of living in a Florida semi- jungle, surrounded by all the benefits of quick-change weather, insect pests, and mildly homicidal neighbors-I can, I say, read these books with true pleasure and without any feeling that I am neces- sarily beyond the pale merely because my character is built along lines far less rugged and sterling than those of the people Mrs. Rawlings admires. Cross Creek, which is also the title of her new volume, "is a bend in a country road, by land, and the flowing of Lochloosa Lake into Orange Lake, by water." It is where Mrs. Rawlings lives, and likes to live, and where "The // > ' fi::; .'\ '" ':':,,: '..'...:.: .i\.... ' ,Ç"ird ''''.. i j::fiø- ,. , -;::. . ... '.. :'::/'::'::: ::.,/::::..;: ',', :;;::.: :M . .4 : ,,' ':: :::'. ": '.' :It .\.'\.....:.::.<:i;:;:: . > . ,r ': \.::. :::. ::?:;,'....:. ..#iff';: '. :" r!;\:r ." . .$-....-.-" . . . -:::$ "M:::::. . :..;:-:.... ::"-. ," ,<:i ,';,1j1:.: ;;?j'f .' .-.:::::.:...... .).:;\.;.. .?::: . ....,;.:.:;;;.l;i f' , i ff{t; : . .:. . r . ; . : . . : . ; . . ::;;i,:}. ..... ..: ..:} ::.. Yearling" and her other books were composed. Cross Creek consists of five white and two colored families, great poverty, much nobility of soul, orange groves, more animal and vegetable life than anyone hamlet can possibly use, spells of beautiful weather, spells of dreadful weather, and a stiff, local pride. The things that make up Cross Creek also make up what is surely one of the most fetching of Mrs. Rawlings' books. The central fact about her is that she is a mystic. Beneath the pawky and ten- der humor, the sharp, almost New Englandish eye for character, the sturdy common sense, the womanly interest in the baking of a pie, the highly agree- able Rabelaisian vein revealed in "Cross Creek"-beneath all this is a deep- rooted love of earth, without which her books would be merely little master- pieces of local color and nothing more. "The earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used but not owned," writes Mrs. Rawlings. It is this sense of herself as a sort of worshipping tenant that gives to all her tales and people their quality. "Cross Creek" is about the author's neighbors, and her troubles with maids, and her outhouse, and the odd, by no means always friendly animals amid which she amiably lives, and the food she cooks (some of it a little too sub- tropical for one queasy, puritanic North- ern stomach), and the four seasons, and "",",. '\\ /'. - - . . ^,"-' . :':;.' :.:'. \ . --:...... :j ....: ..:.:....,.:;...;.. ....,:".. *'''" t:. (( Here I am, Ed, back here." the art of growing oranges, and such country matters. There's a three-page story about a man named Marsh Turn- er that is as beautifully turned as any brief tragic tale I can remember off- hand, and there is a long anecdote called "A Pig Is Paid For" that con- L.' fron ts us sharply with the unassailable fact that Mrs. Rawlings is one of the funniest writers now operating in these states. All of her sketches and rumina- tions and local bits and pieces are firmly mortised with the cement of her own temperament, clear-eyed, humorous, and reverent. T HE flow of interesting first novels has thinned sadly during the last two years. The times are hardly shaped to nourish an impulse to start a writing career . It is with a certain surprise, therefore, as well as pleasure, that you read a book like "In the Forests of the Night," by a newcomer, Kenneth S. Davis. It has a dozen faults, including a touch of Thomas \V olfe fever, from which the author win recover, but it is marked by a sense of what writing really is, it is pithy with character, and it is not enfeebled by the usual self-revelations of the beginning young novelist. "In the Forests of the Night," a study of the impulse to self-destruction, would, I should think, be O. K.' d as sound by a good psychiatrist. The cen- tral character is William Kendall, a \ \ , '. . . . . .: ' :. : : ':: . . t : ; . . . : ; . [ . ' . . . ' : . : ; . : ' . : . ; . : . . ' . . . ' . ' : ' . ' : '_ . " ':'::" ': :" :. ::" "::' : : '. :.; ' . . . :: : ::, : ::: : . '. '>;;; i i" 54! ,: -:t, . __ \:: :..:.:.: h .+:':. ' ... . i. . . . . .. . . ,,}'J: ' :::" '/ .:: ;; .:::::.:...::....... t : "'..; ? .... '" l:..:'\..;.. '",,,,' }t.:":(ft.}?f'::Vdf; 'Ú oflo.._--.t.. .... ... ::' ::': .A